2015-10-06 15.00 Seize the Day – Using Building …...2015-10-06 15.00 Seize the Day – Using...
Transcript of 2015-10-06 15.00 Seize the Day – Using Building …...2015-10-06 15.00 Seize the Day – Using...
2015-10-06 15.00 Seize the Day – Using Building Milestones as Energy Efficiency OpportunitiesHolly Carr, Jesse Warren, Peter Brandom, Frank Inoa
Page 1 of 22
www.verbalink.com Page 1 of 22
Automated: The broadcast is now starting. All attendees are in listen-only
mode.
Holly Carr: Hello, everyone. I'm Holly Carr, with the US Department of
Energy. I'd like to welcome you to the October edition of the
Better Buildings Webinar Series. In this series, we profile the best
practices of Better Buildings Challenge partners, Better Buildings
Alliance members, and aligned organizations who are working to
improve energy efficiency in buildings.
Today, we'll be stealing a few pages from the playbooks of our
Better Buildings Challenge partners, who are seizing the
opportunity to capitalize on common milestones in their building
portfolios. Such as building purchase, or aesthetic upgrade, or even
organizational policy changes. To sneak in – or integrate, let's say
– energy efficiency improvements, and achieve higher
performance in their buildings, as well as lower energy costs.
So, let's move on to the next slide, and I'll introduce our presenters,
today. Well, actually, next slide is the agenda, so we're gonna show
you the order of our presentations, and then – There we go, next
slide, to the presenters.
Our first presenter is Jesse Warren, who is an engineer and the
Sustainability Program Manager for Buildings and Operations at
the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. Jesse is responsible
for the university's recycling, electric Demand Response, and
building sustainability programs. He leads a team of energy
engineers, who identify and implement energy efficiency and
retro-commissioning projects across grounds, at UVA.
Next is Peter Brandom, who's a senior project manager for the city
of Hillsboro, Oregon. Starting in 2008, Peter Brandom led the
development of Hillsboro's first comprehensive sustainability plan,
encompassing all city departments. Key work and initiative include
establishment of citywide sustainability governance, the city's first
inventory of greenhouse gas emissions, long-term sustainability
goals, and various engagements and incentives for city residents
and businesses.
He also leads Hillsboro's Mayoral Sustainability Task Force, a
component of the Hillsboro 2035 Community Plan. This work
includes external program such as the Better Buildings Challenge,
and the Workplace Charging Challenge, another DOE initiative for
vehicles.
2015-10-06 15.00 Seize the Day – Using Building Milestones as Energy Efficiency OpportunitiesPage 2 of 22 Holly Carr, Jesse Warren, Peter Brandom, Frank Inoa
www.verbalink.com Page 2 of 22
And finally, last but not least, Frank Inoa, who has been with
Arby's Restaurant Group since 2005, and is currently serving as the
senior director of engineering. Frank is responsible for kitchen,
facility, and equipment design, and oversees many of Arby's
energy efficiency initiatives related to their Energy Matters
program, which is Arby's commitment to energy reduction.
Frank has been in the food service industry for over 30 years, and
his experience includes roles in design, manufacturing, and
consultation within the quick serve restaurant and cruise line
industry. Frank is based out of corporate headquarters in Atlanta,
Georgia.
So we're all over the country, today, with our panelists. Thank you
very much, to each of you, for joining us, today.
Before we get started with our presentation – we can move to the
next slide – I do wanna remind our audience that we will hold
questions until near the end of the hour. Please do go ahead and
send in any questions that you have, through that chat box on your
webinar screen. We will collect those throughout the session, and
will kind of divvy them up to the right person. We should have
plenty of time, towards the end, to get a lot of those questions out
to our panelists, and responded to.
With that, let's kick things off with Jesse Warren, from University
of Virginia. Jesse will tell us about UVA's Delta Force program,
which functions somewhat like a green revolving fund. In some
cases, Jesse and his colleagues are able to partner with interested
departments, or others, on campus. And provide additional funding
to planned renovation projects for energy efficiency upgrades that
wouldn't make it into the projects otherwise.
As Jesse says, they kind of help clean up the rough edges from
these projects, from an energy efficiency perspective, after they've
been completed. So, Jesse, why don't you tell us more?
Jesse Warren: Thanks a lot, Holly. Can I get the next slide?
So, we're gonna be talking a little bit about how we do business,
here at UVA. But really we're gonna talk about is our Delta Force
program. Delta Force is a green revolving fund, hence my cool
graphic. But I'm gonna tell you guys a little bit about how we got
there and sort of what their current successes look like, and the
successes we're working on today.
2015-10-06 15.00 Seize the Day – Using Building Milestones as Energy Efficiency OpportunitiesPage 3 of 22 Holly Carr, Jesse Warren, Peter Brandom, Frank Inoa
www.verbalink.com Page 3 of 22
Next slide, please.
Now, we are in the Office for Sustainability, at the University of
Virginia. The Office for Sustainability is actually located within
facilities management, which is a really convenient place for us,
because we are also the utility biller and provider to the university.
And that comes into play as part of our cost recovery model.
But just to give you a little bit of background, we're a large
research institution located in central Virginia, with about 44,000
faculty staff, students, researchers, and about 16 million square
foot of building area.
Next slide, please.
Now, historically, the university's had funding available to invest
in buildings, but the funding source was very rarely the entity that
was gonna benefit from the efficiency improvements. And so, that
was really the genesis for our Delta Force program.
Next slide, please.
Because we came up with the idea that we would go ahead and
invest in these buildings, and then we'd recover 125 percent of the
cost, through energy savings. We would hold the customers' base
year utilities constant, and then, as those utilities fell, facilities
management would capture the difference between the billed
utility cost and the actual utility bill, until we recovered 125
percent of our investment.
At that time, all of the holds re released, and all of the remaining
savings goes back to the university. Since we're really working on
the difference between the old energy costs and the new energy
costs, we focused on the name "Delta Force."
Next slide, please.
So, this is Bryan Hall. Bryan Hall is the project that I really wanna
kind of do a deep dive and discuss, today. Bryan Hall was designed
in the mid-'90s by Michael Graves, and built in about 1996. That
makes it kind of prime in terms of building age, for a major
maintenance milestone.
Next slide, please.
So, what we did was, Delta Force and others came through, and we
2015-10-06 15.00 Seize the Day – Using Building Milestones as Energy Efficiency OpportunitiesPage 4 of 22 Holly Carr, Jesse Warren, Peter Brandom, Frank Inoa
www.verbalink.com Page 4 of 22
revamped this building. First, we were looking at ways that we
could put in lower-wattage fluorescents or lower-wattage LED
lamps.
Next slide, please.
We're also focused on where we can repair insulation or add
insulating jackets, particularly on steam or hot water equipment.
Traditionally, we didn't insulate a lot of that stuff because of
"service reasons," but insulating jackets allow us to get a lot of the
value out of that, even in a replaceable format.
Next slide, please.
But our biggest upgrade is to upgrade the building to digital
controls. We do this through our Building Optimization Team.
They're an in-house group who is focused on basically stripping
pneumatics off these old air handlers, and replacing them with
modern DDC systems. This team is interdisciplinary, in that
they've got controls technicians, they've got programming folks,
they've got pipe fitters, they've got HVAC techs, they've got
electricians.
So they can come in, improve the controls on these buildings,
while continuing to have the systems hotwired to operate, so the
users and the occupants don't ever see the change as we're making
the upgrade.
Next slide, please.
Now, let's talk about how we actually brought all this together to
fund it. Really, the genesis of this project was that DDC upgrade
through the Building Optimization Team. That was funded from a
different pocket, a deferred maintenance pocket. But once we
identified that they were going to be completely reworking the
controls in this building, that gave us a huge opportunity to come
in and do energy work.
Once they were done, we could come in and we could retro-
commission that system – well, really, commission that system – to
make sure that it was functioning at its best. We could also, like
Holly mentioned, clean up some of the rough edges around the
project. Like, come back with insulation, where they had removed
it to install valves, and things like that.
So with that, that's how we kind of arrived at our project budget.
2015-10-06 15.00 Seize the Day – Using Building Milestones as Energy Efficiency OpportunitiesPage 5 of 22 Holly Carr, Jesse Warren, Peter Brandom, Frank Inoa
www.verbalink.com Page 5 of 22
$215,000.00 was being provided by deferred maintenance to do
that building optimization work, through deferred maintenance.
Furthermore, we invested another $145,000.00 into the building,
through Delta Force. That pays for not only our staff engineers''
time and the relamping, and the stuff that you guys saw. But we're
also looking at doing, like I mentioned, retro-commissioning, lab
work, and some other stuff, with that funding.
Next slide, please.
So let's talk a little bit about results. The base year is the first year
that you see, there. That's the one in red. That's the year that we're
basically repeating, in terms of billing, to our customer. And that's
why you see that peak year over year, in light blue. I went ahead
and showed it behind the remainder of our utility bills.
The purple section is where we wanted relamping and scheduling.
Because of the way our schedules lined up, we were actually able
to get in and do relamping and scheduling of equipment and things
like that, before the Building Optimization Team was able to come
in and do the DDC upgrade. Since those two are separated by
about a year, you're gonna see those differing results, based on that
limited set of ECMs.
And then the final portion of the graph, you'll see the dark blue
utility use, which is the utility use we saw after the DDC upgrade
and retro-commissioning were complete.
Next slide, please.
Since we measure all of our utilities at the building – chilled water,
hot water, and electricity – I'll be able to give you guys very
discreet numbers for those. But chilled water is our biggest
success, here. We were able to cut chilled water use, in that
building, by 75 percent.
We were able to reduce some chilled water use through the
relamping and the scheduling, that's certainly reduced our summer
usage. But once we switched over to digital control, now we had
access to all kinds of resets and fun controls parameters, that we
could tweak in order to reduce the chilled water use in that
building, further.
Next slide, please.
If you see electricity use, again, we also have some reduction, but
2015-10-06 15.00 Seize the Day – Using Building Milestones as Energy Efficiency OpportunitiesPage 6 of 22 Holly Carr, Jesse Warren, Peter Brandom, Frank Inoa
www.verbalink.com Page 6 of 22
it's not as dramatic. We saw some reduction in electricity during
relamping. We saw further reduction in electricity as we got to the
DDC upgrade, and all the variable frequency drives and whatnot
were working correctly. Overall, we've seen about a 14 percent
reduction in electricity, last year, which is pretty good.
Next slide, please.
And I'll be honest, this one was kind of a kick in the pants. We
chased this heating hot water use for the longest time, because our
base year showed very little hot water use in that building. And
then, every subsequent year after, we showed significantly more
hot water use. I've been through this with the building metering
guys and, basically, I've reached the conclusion that our base year
probably under measured our total hot water use. But that said,
we're just living with that, in the project results.
Next side, please.
So, this is our total energy cost, at Bryan Hall. All in, we saw 34
percent reduction energy use, last year. I'm including the 150
percent increase in hot water, so basically we're taking the penalty
for that, and we're still showing a 34 percent reduction. With that
34 percent reduction, that means we got $38,000.00 in energy
savings, last year. And if we're able to continue at that rate, then
we can pay back 100 percent of our investment in under 4 years,
and we can pay back that 125 percent of our investment in under 5.
Next slide, please.
Now, today, the projects we're taking on are a little more
substantial. Clark Hall is our newest project, and this is really
where we're relaunching Delta Force. Not just as a standalone
program, but as a part of our bigger, what we call, Building
Sustainability program.
Next slide, please.
This next slide just gives us kind of the same funding look of how
we pursue this work at Clark Hall. We're gonna get $150,000.00
for the DDC upgrade. Again, we felt it made sense to partner on
this project, and we're bringing $300,000.00 to it. If you notice,
compared to the previous job, we're bringing a lot more money
than we brought to Bryan Hall, and I'll explain to you why.
Next slide.
2015-10-06 15.00 Seize the Day – Using Building Milestones as Energy Efficiency OpportunitiesPage 7 of 22 Holly Carr, Jesse Warren, Peter Brandom, Frank Inoa
www.verbalink.com Page 7 of 22
In this project, we're not just bringing Delta Force, we're bringing a
lot of other pieces under the umbrella that we call Building
Sustainability. Delta Force is still gonna happen. I mean, that 125
percent cost recovery vehicle sort of opens the door financially to a
lot of the things that we wanna do, here. But we're not focusing on
it as the crown jewel. We're just referring to Building
Sustainability as the umbrella.
Through Delta Force, we're gonna fund the Building Optimization
Team. A portion of that upgrade money is gonna come from
deferred maintenance. But where there are upgrades that we want
to do beyond their minimum needs – that is, add additional
sensors, and things like that, so that we can get additional energy
conservation measures – we're paying for all that.
Furthermore, this is gonna be our first LEED for existing Buildings
Operation and Maintenance project. We're really pursuing LEED
EBOM hard, in this building. Our upper level administration wants
to see us doing a deep sustainability dive that's also focused on
third-party vetted tools. So this is gonna be our first EBOM LEED
project, even though we've got almost 40 LEED certified buildings
here on grounds, already. Those are all new construction jobs.
We're also gonna bring our Green Labs program, which, at this
stage, is not even fully developed. Its pilot is going to be in Clark
Hall, but, again, we're gonna do all this under this umbrella of
Building Sustainability.
The idea is, we're really going to leverage our infrastructure and
the personnel in our buildings, in order to bring these energy
savings projects to the next level. It's not just good enough for us
to go through and improve the infrastructure in a transparent and
visible way. Now we really wanna bring the occupants into it, and
get their effort, as we're trying to improve our results.
Next slide, please.
And the last thing I'll show you is some of the marketing work that
we're kind of giving to these customers. This is an update that
we're gonna blast through the building. You have to understand,
this is a mockup, so some of the text on there doesn't make
technical, perfect sense. But this is the kind of communication we
want those occupants to see, as we're making physical
improvements in this infrastructure.
2015-10-06 15.00 Seize the Day – Using Building Milestones as Energy Efficiency OpportunitiesPage 8 of 22 Holly Carr, Jesse Warren, Peter Brandom, Frank Inoa
www.verbalink.com Page 8 of 22
Next slide, please.
So that's it for me. If you all have any specific questions, here's my
contact information. And we'll hold any additional questions to the
end of the webinar. So back to you, Holly.
Holly Carr: Great, thanks very much, Jesse. And, Jesse, I wanna be clear to our
audience. When Jesse's talking about customers, you're talking
about your departments and those building projects on campus,
right?
Jesse Warren: That's absolutely right. We're decentralized enough that I view
each of my departments as a respective client.
Holly Carr: Okay, thanks.
Let's see, let's zoom across the country, here, and head over to
Hillsboro, Oregon, and Peter Brandom. Peter tries to insert energy
efficiency into the conversation, at many points in the city –
construction of new buildings, major renovations of existing city
buildings. He gets the conversation going within ongoing
maintenance programs, and when the city considers policy changes
affecting buildings, or as the city's energy infrastructure.
Peter, can you go ahead and give us some of your specific
examples, here?
Peter Brandom: Absolutely. Good morning, everyone, and welcome to the Pacific
Northwest. I'll go ahead and ask to go to the next slide, please.
Actually, the next slide beyond that. That's my title slide.
I wanted to start, just to orient folks, perhaps some of you have
been to Portland, Oregon. Hillsboro lies within the greater Portland
metro area. In the upper left-hand image map, you can see where
the Portland region lies, relative to the mouth of the Columbia
River, which is in the upper left-hand portion of that map.
Hillsboro's one of 25 cities within a 3-county regional area. We're
home to Intel, the largest private employer in Hillsboro, in Oregon,
with 18,000 employees. And we're now the fifth largest city in
Oregon, just under 100,000 population.
Next slide.
I think that cities have a unique position, in terms of being the
entity that provides critical services to a community. Our city is a
2015-10-06 15.00 Seize the Day – Using Building Milestones as Energy Efficiency OpportunitiesPage 9 of 22 Holly Carr, Jesse Warren, Peter Brandom, Frank Inoa
www.verbalink.com Page 9 of 22
full service city. The only thing that we don't do is wastewater
treatment. We do everything else, from police and fire to parks,
streets, street signals. We have just over 800 employees, just over
half a million total square feet of facilities, and a large portion of
that is enrolled in the Better Buildings Challenge. We've been a
leader in installing electric vehicle charging infrastructure for our
community.
Next slide, please.
And all this within the context of the broad sustainability program
that we established in 2010, that has very ambitious, tangible
environmental sustainability goals for the year 2030. We're doing
what we can, within the reality of our world, to move toward those
goals, including Better Buildings Challenge goal of achieving 20
percent improvement on EUI for all our facilities – actually, most
of them – by 2020.
We are currently – at least, as of last year – 16 percent reduced
energy use intensity since 2009. So we're getting very close to
achieving that goal.
Next slide, please.
The three areas that I'd like to talk about – in terms of building
milestones and the opportunities they're in – are new construction
and renovation, operations and maintenance, and then a couple of
related policy opportunities. There are probably numerous other
policy opportunities, but I'll touch on a couple.
Next slide, please.
So first, regarding new construction and renovation, we started out,
back in about 2006, built a new civic center here in Hillsboro, and
achieved LEED gold status for that building. It was just the second
LEED gold certified municipal building, at that time. Our
community really voiced its intent that that new building should be
LEED certified, and we achieved that.
What we've learned in the interim is that, designing a building to a
certain standard certainly doesn't mean that it will operate to that
standard. So we've really refocused our efforts on, essentially,
marrying the design and the operation of the building. A couple of
important aspects of that are energy modeling and third-party
commissioning.
2015-10-06 15.00 Seize the Day – Using Building Milestones as Energy Efficiency OpportunitiesPage 10 of 22 Holly Carr, Jesse Warren, Peter Brandom, Frank Inoa
www.verbalink.com Page 10 of 22
Next slide, please.
What we have found, over time, is that if the designers are not
designing a new facility or renovation with the reality and
knowledge of existing systems – including controls, as Jesse was
talking about – then, we can run into some big problems once the
building is completed. So that has been a renewed emphasis for us,
is to make sure that the operators are involved in the design of new
buildings and renovations.
Next slide, please.
With that, I wanna talk about our Better Buildings Challenge
showcase project, which is one of our two libraries. It's called the
Shute Park Library, and it is an architecturally significant building
that was completed in 1972. It's a very cool building. But by 2010,
2011, it didn't look so cool anymore, because it was very tired and
had a lot of, particularly mechanical, but also lighting
workarounds, to make it more functional with all the changes that
had been made through the years.
So I've included a few photos that give you a very limited, but
hopefully helpful, snapshot of some of those kinds of years – what
years have done to the building, and some of those workarounds.
Next slide, please.
So when looking at upgrading this building, the city looked at what
it would cost to totally replace the building. Or to basically strip it
down and rebuild it on the existing frame, preserving that
architectural significance. I'm personally pleased that the city saw
the opportunity to simply – well, it wasn't simple, but to – rebuild
it on its existing architecture.
It's an absolutely beautiful building, now, with new lighting and
mechanical systems, and including, also, significant daylighting.
And we are in the process, now, of looking at the pre- and post-
renovation – or beyond the one-year mark – where we can see
what the energy improvement will actually have been. We
anticipate that to be close to, if not exceeding, the 20 percent
improvement that was envisioned at the outset.
Next slide, please.
Now, as regards to operations and maintenance, we, last year,
completed the city's first energy management plan, and within that
2015-10-06 15.00 Seize the Day – Using Building Milestones as Energy Efficiency OpportunitiesPage 11 of 22 Holly Carr, Jesse Warren, Peter Brandom, Frank Inoa
www.verbalink.com Page 11 of 22
plan are a couple of key policies. One being that we will have a
third-party commissioning agent for any significant new
construction or renovation of a city building. We also really focus
on how buildings are maintained, focusing on energy management
and occupant behavior. We have quarterly meetings to review the
prior quarter utility data, and to identify areas of opportunity and
aberrations.
That energy management plan prescribes a process and calendar,
and so forth, and we continually track that data.
Next slide, please.
One example of a building milestone that we leverage, actually,
each year, now, is our aquatic center. It's a larger facility with a
large outdoor swimming pool and multiple indoor swimming
pools, a recreation center. There are unique energy challenges and
opportunities, there.
The snapshot, here, from our Better Buildings Challenge data
dashboard reflects that we have achieved quite a lot of energy
improvement from prior actions. But, again, this year, every fall,
the building is shut down for regular maintenance, for a couple of
weeks. So we really try to time energy efficiency upgrades for that.
We did it again this year, and we went through and did pretty
major mechanical and lighting upgrades, and should achieve,
again, very significant energy improvements with that building.
So that's one very specific milestone for a building that we try to
take advantage of every year.
Next slide, please.
Then, in terms of related policy opportunity, our council has made
a dark sky a high priority, and we've been working on new
standards, both for community and city development for lighting,
to make sure that at least everything going forward is dark sky
compliant. At the same time, with the maturation of LED lighting,
in particular, we've seen a huge opportunity for improving our
energy performance, with lighting improvements. We've done that
both for exterior and interior lighting, and have seen some
significant gains, there.
Next slide, please.
Then before I close, I just also wanted to mention something not
2015-10-06 15.00 Seize the Day – Using Building Milestones as Energy Efficiency OpportunitiesPage 12 of 22 Holly Carr, Jesse Warren, Peter Brandom, Frank Inoa
www.verbalink.com Page 12 of 22
unlike what Jesse was talking about with the Delta Force program.
We have an internal sustainability revolving fund that we
established a few years ago. It's a separate line item fund that was
originally seeded with energy savings from a few different
projects, and continues to reap the benefits of the energy
improvements from historic energy improvements.
Then those funds are made available to employees, actually, to
identify areas of opportunity, whether they're energy-related or not,
if they advance our sustainability objectives. This is a source for
funding for projects, and we're currently considering, for example,
a proposal to install bike maintenance stations at our libraries, for
people to use.
So, next slide.
With that, I will close. And thank you for your time, and welcome
any of you to reach out to me directly, or to come and visit us in
the beautiful Pacific Northwest. Thank you.
Holly Carr: Thanks so much, Peter. Folks, you've heard mention of these
implementation models in Peter's previous slide, and talking about
his green revolving fund. So, implementation models are actually
little case studies that all of our Challenge case partners put
together with us, highlighting some of their best practices.
So, University of Virginia's implementation model is around their
Delta Force program, and Hillsboro developed a model talking
about their green revolving fund. You can find all of those
implementation models, and a lot of other case studies and
resources, at our Better Buildings Solution Center, which is pretty
new. It was launched in May, this year, and is really kind of the
online headquarters for all things Better Buildings, and certainly
for all of our partner resources.
The easiest way to find that is to google it, "better buildings
solution center." From there, you can do all kinds of searches, by
your sector, by your energy efficiency challenge. You can look for
"show me all of the solutions about financing energy efficiency
projects," for example. So, I encourage our audience to check that
out, as well.
Let's move on to the next slide, and our next presenter.
I also wanna give folks just a quick reminder to send in any
questions that you have for our panelists, through that chat
2015-10-06 15.00 Seize the Day – Using Building Milestones as Energy Efficiency OpportunitiesPage 13 of 22 Holly Carr, Jesse Warren, Peter Brandom, Frank Inoa
www.verbalink.com Page 13 of 22
window. We're collecting those, and we'll answer them during the
Q&A period at the end of this session.
So, for our presentations from Arby's, some of our audience
members may have noticed a new look at your local Arby's
restaurant, in recent months or years. While many of the Arby's
restaurants are getting an aesthetic facelift inside and out, our
presenter Frank Inoa makes sure that they also receive an energy
efficiency boost at this important building milestone.
So, Frank, can you tell us a little more about what you're doing
across the Arby's portfolio?
Frank Inoa: Absolutely. Thank you.
Good afternoon, everyone. So I don't have a lot of slides, but I do
have a story, which I think it will be compelling and interesting to
you folks. I'll start off by saying that Arby's Restaurant Group is
the franchisor for the Arby's brand, but is also an operator of over
900 restaurants. So a lot of what I'll be talking to you about, today,
are really related to the 900 and plus restaurants that we operate.
The data, the savings, the stories, and the wins that we have, we
share those with our franchisees, of course, but these are basically
mostly corporate-related.
So, I'll start with that, with the story of how we got to our current
program, Efficiency Matters. Back in 2012, when sales were a
little slack throughout the industry, we were looking for ways to
achieve some savings. One of the items we discovered was energy
usage. Our typical restaurants consume about $35,000.00 to
$42,000.00 a year in energy spend. That's a lot of money over 900-
plus restaurants.
Our goal, at the time, was, "Let's look at ways to make some small
wins, and extrapolate those over many restaurants, and begin a
program there." Again, sales were flat, so there wasn't a lot to
invest in these programs, but we didn't think we needed to. We
thought that just changing the culture, bringing education to our
staff members, our employees, and developing some behaviors, we
could start off this program.
In 2012, we reached out to various companies that specialize in
consultation of energy efficiency, and we partnered with a
company called Ecova. Ecova helped us analyze our restaurants,
and helped us develop a short-term and a long-term plan. The
short-term, of course, was low-cost or no-cost solutions. That was
2015-10-06 15.00 Seize the Day – Using Building Milestones as Energy Efficiency OpportunitiesPage 14 of 22 Holly Carr, Jesse Warren, Peter Brandom, Frank Inoa
www.verbalink.com Page 14 of 22
the first way we could get our foot in the energy efficiency door, if
you will, so that we could start getting some wins, and then
looking at ways of investing in the future.
One of the things that they helped us work on was, for example,
the hot water temperature. Most of the sanitation in the restaurant
is done by chemicals, so hot water is really for the comfort of our
patrons and our staff. So we said, "Let's standardize the
temperature across the portfolio, and that will provide some
savings."
We also relooked at our on/off schedule. We had one for many
years, but many of those were in the back office, not being really
looked at by our employees. So we had an opportunity to pull that
out of the files, relook at it, reconfigure it, and see if we could
increase some of the savings that we weren't achieving, to begin
with.
Next slide, please. Next slide? Thank you.
From these early winnings, we started to look at other ways of
implementing small- or medium-size initiatives that would, again,
give us immediate wins, and get the program rolling. So some of
the things we looked at, for example, were gaskets in our
refrigeration. We also installed, across the system, low flow
aerators in all our public faucets. Pre-rinse spray valve, for
example, is another inexpensive solution that we implemented
across all 900-plus restaurants.
These small savings, again, allowed us to see some of the savings
we were doing energy wise, and allowed us to reinvest some of
those savings into many medium-sized investments. So from those
small investments, we were able to perform a little bit bigger ones.
For example, programmable thermostats, which in itself grew to a
little bit bigger program of an asset management program, or asset
management system, that we deployed across all restaurants.
We also installed, in all our walk-in boxes and freezers,
electronically commutated motors, or ECMs. Also installed vinyl
strip curtains.
As this program took hold, we then developed an energy policy.
And from that policy, we developed goals of a 15 percent energy
intensity reduction, by 2015. And an energy policy – not only a
policy, but a program – a pillar, if you will, and we called that
Efficiency Matters.
2015-10-06 15.00 Seize the Day – Using Building Milestones as Energy Efficiency OpportunitiesPage 15 of 22 Holly Carr, Jesse Warren, Peter Brandom, Frank Inoa
www.verbalink.com Page 15 of 22
We raised that level of pillar, within our organization, to that of
training, to that of food safety. To us, energy efficiency not only
was a financial plus, but it's also the right thing to do. It's the
responsible thing to do, with a portfolio of 900 restaurants. And if
you extrapolate that to our whole system, we're talking 3600
restaurants. So we're hoping that a lot of the programs that we
initiate here at corporate, are implemented by our franchisees.
Which many are, as a matter of fact.
Next slide, please.
So, here we are, 2015. Our program has been vey successful, thus
far. Our goal of 15 percent by 2015 is very close to achievable, and
we've had many, many savings in the area of energy. That has
allowed us to rollout equipment such as low oil, energy-efficiency
fryers. We've upgraded, or retrofitted, over 260 parking lot lights,
from HIDs to LEDs.
We've converted over 350 of our restaurants from t12 to t8, and
even within that conversion, we upgraded to LED wherever we
can, in our interior lighting. When we're remodeling, we're using a
lot of membrane roofing that provides a lot of savings. So, as we're
rolling out equipment, as we are remodeling, as we're building new
buildings that we are doing now, we're also incorporating a lot of
our energy efficiency initiative.
This year, for example, we had the opportunity to replace almost
400 rooftop units. Again, those kinds of projects weren't really
possible without all the savings and the planning achieved from
this Efficiency Matters program.
Next slide, please.
So, as I mentioned, our goal in 2012 was a 15 percent reduction in
total energy consumption, by 2015. We are very close. Last year,
we upped that a little bit, if you will, and joined the Better
Buildings Alliance and the Better Buildings Challenge, to raise that
reduction to 20 percent by 2020.
As you know, we get a lot of the low hanging fruit, so now it gets a
little bit more creative. But we think that, with that program in
place and a culture change, I think that will be very feasible.
This slide, here, shows that at the end of 2014 we had achieved 11
percent reduction. Thus far, we're close to 14.5, so we're very
2015-10-06 15.00 Seize the Day – Using Building Milestones as Energy Efficiency OpportunitiesPage 16 of 22 Holly Carr, Jesse Warren, Peter Brandom, Frank Inoa
www.verbalink.com Page 16 of 22
confident that we will hit the 15 percent by the end of 2015.
Next slide.
So, some of the things that we've partnered with, some of the
partners have been Ecova – for example that was our energy
consultant. Powerhouse Dynamics – I don't wanna plug'em, but
these are some of the folks that have helped us get to where we are,
today. And, of course, the Better Buildings Challenge and
Department of Energy has helped us, providing us a lot of
guidance on how to maintain this program.
That's it for me. Thank you very much. My information will be
available at the end of the presentation. Feel free to contact me,
and I'll be happy to share anymore stories. Thank you very much.
Holly Carr: Thanks so much, Frank. You helped us plug, also, a number of
initiatives [laughs] that are important, here at DOE, that we're
trying to reach out on. Including LED lighting and
upgrading/retrofitting, both interior lights and exterior lights, to
LEDs. This is one of the big, big wins for US energy reduction.
We have two campaigns, through the Better Buildings initiative,
that are open to the public and available resources that folks can
download and use.
The first campaign is our LEEP campaign, which is energy
efficiency in parking. So we're really encouraging folks to go to
that website, to download technology specifications and other
technical resources. To help you upgrade your outdoor parking
facilities, either parking garages or parking lots.
And then the second campaign is our interior lighting campaign.
So we just took it all indoors and provided a lot of resources for
folks who are interested in doing those LED troffer replacements,
preferably with controls. So I'll also encourage folks to take a look
at our interior lighting campaign. Again, Google is your best friend
for finding those on the website.
And Frank mentioned massive replacement of RTUS, across their
portfolio. That is another place where DOE certainly agrees with
Arby's, that there is enormous potential to both upgrade, retrofit,
and replace rooftop units, rooftop HVAC units, that are ten years
old or older. They have made so much progress with those units,
that it really makes a lot of sense, in many cases, to look at
replacing those. So, check out our Advanced Rooftop Unit
Campaign, in addition, and download resources there, too.
2015-10-06 15.00 Seize the Day – Using Building Milestones as Energy Efficiency OpportunitiesPage 17 of 22 Holly Carr, Jesse Warren, Peter Brandom, Frank Inoa
www.verbalink.com Page 17 of 22
Let's go on to the next slide, and I think there are a couple of
additional resources from our partners, that we wanna highlight.
So, next slide after that.
Yeah, so, these are links to the homepages for each of our partners
– for Arby's, for Hillsboro, and University of Virginia – that show
the implementation models and showcase projects available from
all three of our presenters, today. If you're interested in learning
more about their green revolving programs, and so forth, you can
find that information there.
Okay, so, now is the time where we can really dig into some of the
questions that we've gotten from our audience members. Jesse,
since your questions have been waiting the longest to be responded
to, I'll ask a couple of questions for you.
First one is kind of a technical question about your software. What
software did you use, to track these savings and to generate the
graphics?
Jesse Warren: You know, this is, like, the most boring answer, but we have a
huge metering component. Because we provide district energy at
UVA, we've got meters, we've got meters at every building.
They've got a huge sort of software database system that they keep
all of that information in. That's where all of the utilities are
measured, metered, and our savings is calculated.
On the graphics side, really, everything you saw, I did in Excel.
That said, we're probably moving to Tableau for all of that.
Tableau will let me kind of cut a view into that utility data, and
sort of work with it directly, and then I'll be able to generate
visualizations off of that. But we haven't really scratched the
surface, what we can do there.
Holly Carr: Great. And we had a question about how you kind of reach out
about new projects that are coming up. Obviously, the building
milestone at UVA, that your team tends to capitalize on, is this
retrofit of an existing building. Where you find out that something
is happening, and your sustainability team kind of swoops in and
helps out with additional funds, to get better. Or, in some cases,
just get energy efficiency upgrades into that project.
Can you speak a little bit about sort of how you make those
connections? Who do you work with on campus, to make sure you
2015-10-06 15.00 Seize the Day – Using Building Milestones as Energy Efficiency OpportunitiesPage 18 of 22 Holly Carr, Jesse Warren, Peter Brandom, Frank Inoa
www.verbalink.com Page 18 of 22
know about those projects that are up and coming, so you can get
involved in time?
Jesse Warren: Yeah, well, let me kind of start with just this brief bit of
background. You know, I'm an engineer, and my background is
construction. I'm now over in operations and maintenance, which
isn't where I've spent the majority of my career. So, although I've
only ever been in maintenance, here at UVA, I've been involved in
design and construction my entire career, especially LEED work.
So, one key way we've done that is sort of build those relationships
among our project managers and the folks who are actually
executing these projects, so that we can provide value on their
projects. But they also help us understand what's in the pipe.
The second two partners that are really important to this is, first
off, our controls group. I mean, I talk about our Building
Optimization Team, those five or six guys and what they're able to
achieve. But we do other retro-commissioning projects at UVA,
and so we have to work with the entirety of the control team.
The associate director for building automation and I talk, like,
daily, because I need to know where they're headed, just like they
wanna know where I'm headed. And that's sort of my most direct
relationship, because anything that's involved with energy, HVAC,
and, I'll say, a loss of efficiency, building control is usually one of
the first folks who know about it.
The third piece that I work closely with is what we call Work
Management. They're, really, the group who divvies out the
deferred maintenance funding. They also worry about our facility
condition index across the university. They are often planning both
capital projects and small and large renovations, into a five-year
timeframe.
So my process is something like, we look through all our
buildings, we look at who's got the high utility bills, we look at
where we wanna be from sort of a utility interest perspective. I
then take it and I vet it with all these different partners, in order to
figure out whether or not that work aligns with where they're
going, prior to bringing any of this to prospective clients. Any one
of them can shut that down by telling me that there's enough work
going on that's gonna undo what I've done, that I move on.
So, to give you a real short answer: to arrive at the, probably, 10
projects we do every year, we probably start with a list of 30,
2015-10-06 15.00 Seize the Day – Using Building Milestones as Energy Efficiency OpportunitiesPage 19 of 22 Holly Carr, Jesse Warren, Peter Brandom, Frank Inoa
www.verbalink.com Page 19 of 22
before we can find 10 that give us the right combination of things
that make us move forward.
Holly Carr: Okay, thanks. And I think, you know, this is just another example
of – Better Buildings has been around, now, for 4-ish years, and so
we're starting to see some consistent best practices, across sectors,
across all different kinds of organizations and geographies. And
one of the things I think we are starting to see is the importance of
those internal partnerships. Of Sustainability working with Work
Planning, of Sustainability working with Real Estate, or working
with Finance. And really reaching out, inside the organization, to
make energy efficiency happen.
Jesse Warren: Yeah, that's really been a big focus for us, trying to get to the place
where we're one large facilities management group, not a bunch of
individual silos. As that approach has changed, that has greatly
increased the impact of what we can do from the Office for
Sustainability.
Holly Carr: Right.
Jesse Warren: Thank you, Holly.
Holly Carr: Thanks.
Peter, we had one question for you, regarding – you mentioned
reviewing your utility bills on a monthly basis. We had a question
about, who is involved in those reviews, and how do you take
action on that review, each month?
Peter Brandom: Sure. We who assemble and manage that data are in the city
manager's office, so it's sort of a central function in a decentralized
organization. We facilitate those meetings. We have a monthly
meeting with our facilities maintenance group, who are the folks
who are on the ground managing the buildings. And so, every third
meeting, once a quarter, we dedicate more time, and invite a few
other folks in to review the prior quarter’s utility data. That's for
electricity, natural gas, and the water.
Then, in addition to the maintenance facilities team, folks from our
parks maintenance groups, because they manage all of the
irrigation of all our parks and buildings. Our water utility is also,
it's an internal utility, it's our Hillsboro water group. And so we
have folks from our water department, so that they can also help
troubleshoot, and so forth.
2015-10-06 15.00 Seize the Day – Using Building Milestones as Energy Efficiency OpportunitiesPage 20 of 22 Holly Carr, Jesse Warren, Peter Brandom, Frank Inoa
www.verbalink.com Page 20 of 22
And then, if we have any issues, questions, and so forth, the first
level of action and investigation is with the facilities maintenance
group, or with the water irrigation folks. And then, if they can't
figure out what the anomaly or the issue is, then we contact the
utility, in the case of water it’s internal, and figure that out.
Just one quick example of what can be found, or what can happen
if you don't look at your utility, if those bills are simply just getting
paid. We had a water leak go undetected for months, a few years
back, and that ended up to the tune of about $14,000.00-worth of
lost water, because there was a wetland near the facility. It was
going underground and disappearing into the wetland, so it never
became apparent until we started looking at the utility bills.
And so, we're able to catch things, if there is a problem.
Holly Carr: Great, thanks, Peter. I'm gonna turn it over to Frank, for just a
moment. A couple of questions on how you identify those low- and
no-cost opportunities, particularly since, unlike Hillsboro that's all
in one utility territory, Arby's is all over the place. So, how do you
identify those opportunities, given the various utilities and energy
efficiency program regions?
Frank Inoa: Well, they weren't really identified individually, or even
regionally. It was, again, we had a consultant visit our restaurants,
see our operations, see our behaviors. And from those, make some
recommendations. We just took the first couple of low-cost ones
and implemented those, because those were easy to implement.
Like I mentioned, the on/off schedule is something that we had in
our system long before we took on this initiative. But, again, we
didn't have the culture, we didn't have the focus. Thus, we had a
nice laminated on/off schedule in the back office, not present in
our employees' visibility. So we brought it to them. We also added
things like stickers, for example, that we added on certain pieces of
equipment, that reminded them to turn it on, turn it off.
Little things that we didn't do in the past, very low-cost to do now,
and those were implemented. And the success rate, for example,
was much higher.
The restaurants that they visited saw an array of temperatures on
our hot water heaters, and we saw that that was an easy one. That
was just, really, a communication across the system, where we told
our operators, you know, "These are the various types of water
heaters that are in our restaurants. Here's how you adjust them."
2015-10-06 15.00 Seize the Day – Using Building Milestones as Energy Efficiency OpportunitiesPage 21 of 22 Holly Carr, Jesse Warren, Peter Brandom, Frank Inoa
www.verbalink.com Page 21 of 22
That alone was a simple communication and a simple directive,
and followed, probably, by 95 percent-plus of our operators.
It wasn't a lot of thinking, to put those to work right away.
Holly Carr: Great, and you must've read my mind. We had another question
asking about specific adjustments that have been made, to train
Arby's employees on sustainable behavior. So, you just mentioned
a lot of those, on very low- and no-cost items and quick training
that can be done, for staff and managers.
Frank Inoa: We have a weekly newsletter. We've always had one, and now we
have our own section, if you will, called "Efficiency Matters." So,
a lot of our weekly communications is to reinforce and remind
some of the things that are in place, so that our operators continue
to perform these adjustments, or whatnot, in the field. It's been
very successful.
I think, ultimately, when you include everyone, and the operators
understand the importance of it, it's like their own home. A lot of
these operators think their restaurants as their own, so as you
would in your house, you know, they now appreciate shutting off
the outdoor lighting at 12:00 noon. You know, where before, it was
just probably left all day, and no one really noticed or realized the
importance. So our operators are really engaged.
Holly Carr: Great. Thank you so much, Frank. And thanks to all of our
presenters.
Before we wrap it up, here, I want to go on to the next slide, and
make sure folks know about the plan for our November webinar.
This is "Taming the Energy Hog: What Every Organization Should
Know to Address Data Center Energy Use."
You may not think of yourself as an IT company but, in this day
and age, just about all of our organizations are becoming IT
companies, to a certain extent. We are all processing so much more
data, holding so many more e-mails in archives, than ever before,
and that's just exponential. And, therefore, our data centers are
becoming a part of life for all of us, whether they're big data
centers, multiple data centers, whole buildings of data centers, or
small little closets of a data center. They are all energy users, and
they're becoming an increasing slice of the energy pie.
So, I encourage you to join us, next November 3rd – first Tuesday
of November – and hear from some of our partners working with
2015-10-06 15.00 Seize the Day – Using Building Milestones as Energy Efficiency OpportunitiesPage 22 of 22 Holly Carr, Jesse Warren, Peter Brandom, Frank Inoa
www.verbalink.com Page 22 of 22
us on data center energy efficiency, specifically. You'll hear from
organizations that are not data-focused organizations. So you'll
hear from the Home Depot, and also from Michigan State
University. Both of them will be providing us with some case
studies, and talking about what they are doing to reduce data
energy use in their organizations.
And then we'll hear from our own Department of Energy data
center folks, talking about kind of the basics, giving you a primer
on what to think about, how to start looking at your data center
energy use. And, perhaps – again, we're talking about partnerships
– who to partner with in your organization, on the IT side, that can
really help you make a dent in that energy use.
Let's go to the next slide, please.
So, with that, I'd really like to thank our panelists very, very much,
for taking the time be with us, today. And, also, our audience.
You can feel free to contact our presenters. If we can go to the next
slide and show the contact information. You can feel free to
contact our presenters directly, with any additional questions that
you might have, or anything that we didn't get to during the Q&A
period. You can also look for an archive of this session, to be
posted within the next week. And you'll receive an e-mail that that
archive is available, so you can access any of the hyperlinks, as
well as the audio and slides for this presentation.
If you'd like to learn more about the Better Buildings Challenge or
the Alliance, please check out our website. Or feel free to contact
me at the e-mail shown below. I'd be happy to talk with you about
it. And I encourage you to follow the Better Buildings Initiative on
Twitter, for all of the latest. Down there, on the bottom.
You will receive a notice when this archive is posted. And thanks,
again, for joining us. Take care.
[End of Audio]